On the Emergence of Political Identity in the Czech Mass Media:
The Case of the Democratic Party of Sudetenland
IVAN LEUDAR*
Department of Psychology, The University of Manchester
JIŘÍ NEKVAPIL*
Department of General Linguistics, Charles University, Praha
Abstract: Six days after the dissolution of Czechoslovakia on 6th January 1993, an
article appeared in the Czech national daily Rudé právo. It reported two events – a
meeting of the preparatory committee of the Democratic Party of Sudetenland (Cz.
Demokratická strana Sudety) and a subsequent news conference given by its chairman, Jaroslav Blühmel. The party and its chairman were previously almost unknown
to the public. The two events, however, turned out to be politically significant. What
Blühmel had said was reported in most of the Czech mass media, and elicited public
reactions from major Czech politicians.
The materials we use in this paper include most of the articles in Czech national
newspapers during the period which dealt with J. Blühmel and the Democratic Party
of Sudetenland (DPS), together with a relevant TV programme. We focus on how
the political identity of the DPS was established and contested in the Czech mass
media. The category ‘DPS’ was to begin with almost inter-subjectively empty. We
demonstrate how this was fleshed out by binding to it the views, intentions and actions of its incumbents and its opponents. We find that in the case of the DPS the
‘fleshing out’ was by no means a consensual matter; Blühmel and his political opponents never converged on a common definition of the DPS.
Czech Sociological Review, 1998, Vol. 6 (No. 1: 43-58)
Introduction
In this paper we investigate the emergence of the identity of a political party – the Democratic Party of Sudetenland (Cz. Demokratická strana Sudety) – in the Czech mass
media. We begin with an assumption that political identity can be treated as a ‘membership category’ and analysed using techniques of ethnomethodology, in which the concept
originated [e.g. Sacks 1992, Jayyusi 1984, Hester and Eglin 1997, Psathas 1997]. According to membership category analysis (MCA) ‘membership categories’ are constituted by
‘category bound predicates’, which may include activities, dispositions to act, aims, beliefs, and values [see Watson 1978]. Categories are organised by members in collections,
and together with the rules of application they become ‘membership category devices’
[Sacks 1972]. Social and ethnic identities have been analysed as membership categories
previously [e.g. Moerman 1974, Watson 1983, Nekvapil 1997]; this paper extends the
approach to the domain of politics. The domain matters – political parties are usually
unique agencies. There is, for instance, only one Conservative and Unionist Party in the
*)
Direct all correspondence to: Ivan Leudar, Department of Psychology, The University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester, UK, M13 9PL, e-mail [email protected] or to: Jiří
Nekvapil, Department of General Linguistics, Charles University, nám. Jana Palacha 2, CZ-11638
Prague, e-mail [email protected]
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Czech Sociological Review, VI, (1/1998)
UK. We could assume that political identity is a category with one member only, but it is
also possible to allow predicates to bind to proper names designating political parties. The
Democratic Party of Sudetenland (DPS) was certainly a situated collectivity and as such
it falls within the scope of MCA [cf. Hester and Eglin 1997: 3]. With this proviso, and for
convenience, we will not just treat political identities as categories, but also refer to them
in that way.
Much of the work on membership categories has been on relatively crystallised
categories (such as ‘mother’, ‘baby’) and how these are used in talk. We are dealing with
a complementary problem here: how does the social identity of a new political body – a
new category – emerge? Such a category obviously cannot be static: it has to be produced, changed and used in new contexts. This typically happens in discourse and, as we
shall see, it often involves arguments about which predicates should contribute to the
identity. Sacks addressed a similar problem in his classic ‘hot-rodder’ paper [cf. Sacks
1979]. (From our perspective a ‘hot-rodder’ is a young person who drives souped-up and
customised cars.) Sacks was not actually concerned with how the category emerged, but
rather with its relationship to other applicable categories (such as ‘teenager’) and with
who ‘owned’ and ‘administered’ the category application. We shall nevertheless borrow
Sacks’s term, and characterise our problem as in part concerning the administration of an
emergent category.
A new political agency does not emerge in a vacuum. Its relationships to other
agencies – contemporary or historical ones – may be an important practical consideration
in establishing its political identity. We have observed this to be the case in political mass
media debates in the UK which involved Sinn Fein – the participants’ focal concern was
the relationship between the Sinn Fein and the Irish Republican Army [Leudar 1998].
According to MCA, participants in talk organise categories in, for instance, ‘collections’,
‘classes’, and ‘relational pairs’. We cannot say in advance of an investigation with which
existing political bodies the participants will associate the emerging DPS, nor how they
will formulate the relationships. These are practical problems for the participants to address in talk. Our main concern was to establish and make explicit how the participants
jointly ‘administered’ relationships between categories.
Our main interest is therefore in how categories and the relationships between them
emerge as interactive achievements. The important aspect of our study is that we investigate the formation of political identity in the mass media – in TV debates, news conferences and newspaper articles. We make use of the concept of a ‘distributed discursive
network’ [Leudar 1995, 1998; Nekvapil and Leudar 1998]. This concept is easy to define
as ‘conversation’, but it draws our attention to the following observations. Politicians
speaking on a theme in the mass media frequently address other politicians who are not
present in the studio, at a news conference, or a briefing. The mass media are networked
(newspapers report what has been said on the radio or TV and people ‘on the air’ refer to
newspaper reports) and both political events and their reports are often loosely duplicated.
Political challenges made in the mass media are therefore likely to be heard and responded to (providing, of course, that the opponent has access to the mass media). This
means that even opponents who do not wish to be seen meeting face to face can argue in
public; sometimes, it may in fact be impossible to establish with any certainty that two
politicians are responding to each other. In other words, politicians can engage each other
in public without entering into direct communication, which would entail recognising
each other as communicative partners. We will demonstrate that the indirect engagement
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I. Leudar, J. Nekvapil: On the Emergence of Political Identity in the Czech Mass Media
possible in the discursive networks was one means whereby the DPS was ‘dealt with’ but
denied political status. We shall not, however, describe here the actual network in which
the identity of DPS emerged [for details see Nekvapil and Leudar 1998].
It is clear that we are not investigating the emergence of situated categories in
‘conversation’. Arguments in discursive networks are obviously not exactly like arguments in ‘conversation’, especially if we compare their sequential structures and turntaking. We shall see, however, that MCA formulated in the analysis of conversations is
useful in analysing social identity in the mass media [see also Francis and Hart 1997].
Blühmel Network
The following short article appeared in the Czech national daily Rudé právo on 6/1/1993.1
RP/6/1/932
DP of Sudetenland wants to cancel Beneš decrees
Pilsen (vh) – The cancellation of the so-called Beneš decrees is being demanded by the
preparatory committee of the Democratic Party of Sudetenland, which met on Tuesday in
Pilsen. The change in the stance of this committee to the past property of displaced Germans is clear. The best solution, as the chairman of the preparatory committee Jaroslav
Blühmel told journalists after the meeting, would be, we are told, if it was returned ((to the
owners)). If the Czech government is not so generous, the original owners are even ready to
buy back their factories.
The report was one of the first mentions of the DPS and J. Blühmel in Rudé právo. Like
the readers of Rudé právo we have therefore a unique chance to witness the emergence of
the identity of a new political organisation in the mass media. Leudar [1998] reported on
how the political identity of the Sinn Fein and its spokesperson Martin McGuiness was
contested in the British mass media (Was he representing a political party aiming for
peace or fronting a terrorist organisation?). That ‘contest’, however, involved an attempt
to change radically an already crystallised political identity. Our aim here is to document
how the identity of the DPS was formed in the mass media.
So what did the article RP/6/1/93 say about the DPS? The first predicate bound to
the DPS was the goal to cancel ‘Beneš Decrees’. The headline formulated this as a DPS
‘want’, the first sentence as a ‘demand’ DPS had made. The headline made a claim about
a disposition of the DPS; the article warranted this ascription by reporting what the ‘preparatory committee of the DPS’ demanded. This reporting strategy – disposition-claims
by a journalist, warranted by a speech report – is not unique to Czech newspapers. We
have also observed it being used in British national newspapers [Leudar 1995, 1998].
1)
We mainly use here articles from Rudé právo because of space limitations. This choice is arbitrary but Rudé právo gave the DPS affair the widest coverage. We did collect articles on the DPS
from all other Czech national papers [for details see Nekvapil and Leudar 1998], and we found
that the coverage was very similar. We do use, however, materials from other newspapers when
their presentation of the DPS differs from or extends that of Rudé právo. All the Czech materials
were translated into English by Ivan Leudar. Jiří Nekvapil moderated the translations. We only
present here English translations of the original Czech transcripts and of the newspaper articles.
All the analysis was, however, conducted using the originals. (On the general situation of the
Czech newspapers see [Nekvapil 1996].)
2) In the headings of the news reports, the initials in capitals identify the newspaper, the numerals
the date of publication (RP = Rudé právo; HN = Hospodářské noviny).
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The Beneš Decrees are a sensitive issue in the Czech Republic and demanding their
cancellation may have been one reason why national papers took notice of the DPS. Rudé
právo presupposed knowledge of the Beneš decrees, but it described them subsequently
as the basis on which ‘Sudetan Germans lost their property after the war and had to leave
Czech territory’ (see RP/12/1/1993 below). Cancelling the decrees would be a necessary
condition for returning the confiscated property. The confiscated property is indeed the
theme of the article – the journalist VH reported that the DPS
– was concerned with the return of the confiscated property (lines 4-5),
– would prefer the return of property (‘best solution… would be if …’, lines 5-6), and
– had privileged knowledge of the displaced Germans’ preferences (‘the original owners
are even ready to buy back their factories’, lines 7-8).
Note that the journalist VH did not herself simply define the DPS. Instead, she presented
it in the voice of its representative J. Blühmel. He declared the preference, concern and
knowledge, not the journalist. The assessment that the stance of DPS had changed was,
however, presented in the journalist’s own voice.
The journalist VH also told her readers that the DPS was just coming into being – it
had a ‘preparatory committee’. In the Czech context this formulation afforded two inferences: that the DPS was not yet recognised as a political party, and that public support for
the DPS was probably small (since only a body with more than 1,000 active supporters
could register as a political party in the Czech Republic).
The article placed the DPS in Pilsen, and so it specified the territory of the party’s
current activities. Pilsen happens to be the centre of a region bordering Germany which
once had a strong German community. The Rudé právo article could have been read to
imply that the DPS was ethnically aligned – the predicates bound to the DPS jointly afforded the inference that the party had links with the displaced Sudetan Germans. The
activities of the DPS were presented in Rudé právo in terms of current (democratic) political discourse, and so arguably as legitimate. This was not so in all the papers. All that
is necessary is to compare the headlines of the corresponding news reports:
– DP of Sudetenland wants to cancel Beneš Decrees (Rudé právo – the DPS was presented as a political subject.)
– Sudetan Germans want property (Mladá fronta Dnes – the DPS was presented as an
ethnic grouping.)
– Sudetans (Cz. Sudeťáci) in Pilsen (Svobodné slovo – the DPS was presented as an ethnic grouping using the term of abuse Sudeťáci).
This means that the ethnic connection of the DPS, implicit in Rudé právo, was explicit
and foregrounded in other national papers. The DPS was an ethnic organisation of Sudetan Germans. We shall see below that Blühmel denied any such alignment. His problem
was not unique: representatives of Sinn Fein had to dissociate it in public perception from
the IRA [see Leudar 1998]. Blühmel had to dissociate the DPS from organisations generally perceived by Czech politicians as antagonistic. So one problem a new political
agency has in establishing its identity is to manage its relationships to the other political
bodies, and this involves administering a collection of categories in discourse.
Let us summarise the formulation of DPS by Rudé právo and other Czech national
newspapers so far. It aimed to get the ‘Beneš Decrees’ cancelled and the confiscated
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I. Leudar, J. Nekvapil: On the Emergence of Political Identity in the Czech Mass Media
property returned. It was presented as an ethnically aligned party or even as an ethnic
organisation. Can we say here which of these predicates was crucial to the DPS identity,
and were any of them just incidental? We shall see that this was a matter for the participants to resolve.
Three voices were used in the article to achieve the binding. The voice of the journalist assessed the party or rather its preparatory committee. The voices of the preparatory
committee of the DPS and of its representative J. Blühmel avowed the party’s aims, preferences and knowledge. The use of three voices should not however obscure the fact that
it was the journalist who administered the category DPS in Rudé právo. There were relatively few occasions when the DPS could publicly speak for itself.
The next time the Rudé právo reader would hear about the DPS and Jaroslav
Blühmel was in the following report five days later.
RP/11/1/1993
What ((to do)) with criminality, Germans and Moravia
Prague (zs) – Ten guests on the Sunday programme ‘From the political scene’ tried to deal
with the problematic of Romanies, the criminality in Northern Bohemia, the possible return
of Germans into the Sudetenland, and the question of the standing of Moravia.
((the lines dealing with the problematic of Romanies omitted.))
On the theme of the possible return of Sudetan Germans also spoke Jaroslav Blühmel – the
chairman of Democratic Party of Sudetenland, which is not yet even registered. He said that
their goal was to make healthier what was once the territory of Sudetenland, which today,
according to him, has the greatest criminality and ill health, and to re-evaluate the question
of returning the property of Germans – so guaranteeing the property to those who currently
own it.
((the lines dealing with the standing of Moravia omitted.))
The journalist ZS presented J. Blühmel as ‘the chairman of the DPS’, which was, however, ‘not yet even registered’. So again, the provisional political status of DPS was kept
in view in Rudé právo, as it was in most other national newspapers.
The identity of the DPS was further developed in this article by reporting what
Blühmel himself publicly avowed about the DPS. One aim he declared was to ‘reevaluate’ the current position on returning the property of Germans. Somewhat paradoxically, this would, according to him, now guarantee the property of current Czech owners.
The first Rudé právo article (RP/6/1/93) mentioned only that the DPS aimed for a property settlement. The DPS now entertains the possibility that this could involve the return
of the former German owners. This would alarm many Czechs, as we shall document
below. Not surprisingly these two aims turned out to have been focal in the definition of
the DPS in the eyes of the Czech public.
Rudé právo was the only newspaper which reported Blühmel saying that the DPS
aimed to ‘make healthier what was once the territory of Sudetenland’ (and actually expressed what this presupposes, that the territory was in a terrible state).3 This aim of the
DPS was, as we shall see, not taken up subsequently by Blühmel’s Czech political opponents. This predicate was not contested, it was treated as irrelevant and simply ignored.
3)
‘Bringing health’ to a territory is clearly itself a categorised activity – it could concretely range
from planting trees to closing factories.
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So we have seen that the DPS was aligned by the mass media to Sudetan Germans
explicitly and in terms of its aims. By focusing its activities on Sudetenland, the party
was re-establishing this area as a distinct territory and in need of care. A report in Hospodářské noviny three days later is relevant. It presented even the founding of the DPS as
disreputable (line 1-2).
HN/13/1/1993
The Assembly of Germans in Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia distances itself from the attempt to establish a political party to protect the interests of Germans in Czech Republic.
This was said in an interview for ČTK by the president of this organisation, Ervin Šolc. In
his view, it is nonsensical that the word ‘Sudetenland’ should appear in the name of such
party, as it does in the case of the Democratic Party of Sudetenland being established in Pilsen.
HN/13/1/1993 used the voice of ‘the Assembly of Germans in Czech, Moravia and Silesia’ to attack the DPS. Its representative Šolc was reported to have rejected any need for
an autonomous political party for Germans in the Czech Republic, and the use of the term
‘Sudetenland’ in its name. This is significant: Hospodářské noviny did not attack the DPS
in its own voice but instead used a representative of an organisation of German residents
in Czech Republic. The attack was in the voice of a group one might expect to be an ally
of the DPS. The second interesting feature of this short article is that at that time in the
Czech Republic rejected political activities were unique to the DPS. Hospodářské noviny
attacked DPS by attacking the activities uniquely bound to it (see [Sacks 1992, Vol. I:
301], on identifications through naming a category-bound activity). The mere emergence
of the DPS became a controversial matter.
The article RP/11/1/93 was one reaction in the mass media to what J. Blühmel had
said in the TV programme ‘From the political scene’ (Debata). There were many similar
reactions in almost all the national papers. In order to understand why, it is important to
bear in mind the nature of occasions on which he spoke. The first article, RP/6/1/93,
placed his comments at a provincial press conference. Blühmel’s second performance
(the one reported in RP/11/1/93) was much more public. Debata of 10/1/93 belonged to a
series transmitted after lunch every Sunday in the early nineties. The programme discussed the most important events on the Czech political scene that happened during the
previous week (the original name of the programme was ‘What the week brought’). The
debates were attended by important Czech politicians (unlike in the UK, where they
rarely meet face to face in the studio). The programme still holds an important place in
Czech political culture; the debates are political events in their own right and are referred
to in the same evening’s main TV news reports.
The context of the debate on 10/1/1993 was further unusual due to its position in
the sequence of political events. On 1/1/1993 Czechoslovakia ceased to exist as one state,
and independent Slovakia and Czech Republic came to being. Debata took place just one
week after the dissolution of Czechoslovakia at a time of general uncertainty. The invited
guests were almost all eminent politicians who discussed problems likely to be crucial for
the new Czech Republic. What was said could be understood as a sign of problems to
come. It was therefore not surprising that the DPS became highly visible and Blühmel’s
public appearance had some influence on how the identity of the DPS was constituted. In
fact, a Rudé právo article published two days after the debate voiced the complaint that:
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‘…the so called Democratic Party of Sudetenland was given exceptional space in the
Sunday lunch-time debate’ (RP/12/1/1993, our italics).
So what did Blühmel actually say in Debata? Did it warrant the reports in the national papers? How was the political identity of DPS formulated in Debata? The first
point is that Blühmel had to propose a political identity for the DPS against the background provided by the programme makers in the introduction to the programme. In
summary, the introduction claimed that: ‘many Czech citizens fear the possible return of
Germans; this has begun already; Germans are here becoming more widespread; if they
come as businessmen they could have a positive effect but this may require a total financial settlement over confiscated property’.
ČT1/10/1/19934
001 Hostess: in the Pilsen area er a relatively er vocal political grouping has been forming,
the Democratic Party of Sudetenland, er which er as yet is not officially registered or is it?
002 Blühmel: not yet. not yet.
003 Hostess: nevertheless this association has a relatively ambitious programme. [.] what
are your aims Mr Blühmel.
004 Blühmel: first I’d want to preface, that I will not be speaking here for any grouping er
of Germans in Bohemia, much less for the ger- Sudetan-German Association, with which
that is with the leadership of the Sudetan Association we have no we have nothing in common, we have seen Mr Neubauer in newspapers on television but otherwise nothing, we interact with only wi:th er with local groups, [.] in Germany and in Austria, with land
associations, and where we determine, [.] their views moods etc etc.
The hostess started the debate in Debata by saying that in the Pilsen Region a new ‘vocal
political grouping’ was being formed. It called itself the ‘Democratic Party of Sudetenland’ but it was not yet registered (see 001). Blühmel (introduced in Debata as the
chairman of the DPS) confirmed that the DPS was not yet registered and the hostess immediately downgraded it to an ‘association’. So in Debata, the DPS had begun as an organisation with an uncertain legal status (a political party, an association, a political
grouping?).
The hostess characterised the aims of the ‘association’ as ambitious, and asked
Blühmel to expand (see 003). This is important – Debata was one of those few public
occasions when Blühmel could himself speak for the emerging DPS. (He was quoted in
newspapers previously but this is not the same as speaking for oneself!)
The problem he oriented at in the first place was: Who am I speaking for? Nobody
in the studio had said that Blühmel represented ethnic Germans or their organisations, but
it is precisely this categorisation which he tried to forestall. He rejected it explicitly (see
004, line 1-3). As a spokesperson of the DPS he said that he did not represent any ‘grouping of Germans in Bohemia’. And he explicitly dissociated the DPS from the leadership
of the ‘Sudetan-German Association’ or ‘Landsmannschaft’ (see 004, lines 3-4).5 To put
it more generally, Blühmel started defining the DPS in Debata by managing its relationship to other political bodies and he used his time to say who his party was not related to.
4)
In the headings of the TV transcripts, the capital initials identify the company, the numerals the
date of transmission (ČT1 = Czech Television channel 1).
5) ‘Sudetan-German Landsmannschaft’ is a term used in Czech Republic to refer to organisations
of displaced Sudetan Germans and their descendants.
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(This is closely analogical to Sinn Fein representatives appearing on British television
having to ensure that they were not seen to represent the IRA, [see Leudar 1998].) This
confirms our argument in the introduction that establishing the identity of a new political
body involves not just binding predicates but also sorting out its relationship to other
categories. Blühmel did accept that the DPS was in contact ‘with local groups in Germany and in Austria’ and ‘with land associations’ (see 004, lines 5-6). But this was only
logical since, as he went on to say, the DPS was established to solve the problems between Czechs and Sudetan Germans (see 004 cont. 1, lines 1-2). (The interesting point is
that the identity work in this part of Debata was explicit and need not be inferred by the
analyst.)
ČT1/10/1/1993
004 (cont. 1) Blühmel: our party arose, [.] er for one simple reason. we think that if the
problem of Sudetan Germans and Czechs is not dealt with. at this time which is a good
time. to find [.] a solution. that here er in the future maybe in five ten years will arise problems which, [.] er may end badly. we do not want to spread fear but really, [.] we can see it
in Italy, which which inherited a bit of Germany. Tyrol, and to this day power pylons have
been blown up over there and so on. so we want to prevent this.
In turn 004 (cont. 1) Blühmel continued to speak in the voice of the DPS, and he was
treated in that way by the other participants. This is evident from how he used the pronouns ‘our’ and ‘we’ (lines 1, 4, 6) and from what he was invited to comment on by the
programme hostess (e.g. see 005). The first DPS aim which Blühmel declared was to
decrease the tension between Czechs and Sudetan Germans. He warranted the need for
this by saying that otherwise the future might become dangerous. He likened the situation
in Sudetenland to that in the Tyrol, warning of the danger of terrorism. The other participants in the studio ignored this predicate, but Blühmel’s warning of possible terrorism
was taken up as a threat in many subsequent newspaper reports. We cannot provide these
here because of the space limitations.
ČT1/10/1/1993
004 (cont. 2) Blühmel: on the other hand we are appalled by the state [.] of Northern Bohemia, [.] the state of Ostrava region criminality. [.] ill-health ci- of the local citizens. the
living environment is in such a state. tha:t will not be seen anywhere else in the world.
005 Hostess: so what is your programme.
006 Blühmel: our programme. [.] first of all. is to bring health into what was once Sudetan
territory, we know that it was not a land as such, that it is only. [.] a name of this part of the
Czech Republic, but er there is simply concentrated the highest incidence of criminality the
highest ill health, these are problems which burn us always, there we want to focus on that
territory, and there we want to really [.] achieve something, somehow er to get the people
active, so they really do something for that land.(we think it) Sokolov area Most area, there
[.] it is awful. Mr Pithart would fly over, the old minister of government, the chair of government, he would look shake his head and fly away, to this day nothing has happened
there.
Blühmel went on to describe the desolate state of the territory of former Sudetenland –
the criminality, illness and ecological disaster (see 004, cont. 2). This description did not
define the propensities of the DPS, and the moderator asked him ‘So what is your programme?’ (see 005)? In response Blühmel declared another aim of the DPS: to make the
former Sudetan territory healthier (see 006, lines 1-2).
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The interactive nature of category-work is clearly evidenced by what happened
next in Debata. The moderator did not accept the DPS aims declared so far by Blühmel
as sufficient. He ignored what Blühmel had just said about the state of Northern Bohemia,
and instead he himself introduced another aim of the DPS – to negotiate the return of
confiscated property to Sudetan Germans (see 007).
ČT1/10/1/1993
007 Host: you had a press conference ( ) last week, and there was talk also about the reappraisal of the return of property to ||Sudetan Germans. ( )||
008 Blühmel:
||yes. yes.
I did|| only er talk about the first
point, [.] the other point is the reappraisal [.] er of the return er of property to Sudetan Germans.
To provide some ethnographic background, the problem of confiscated property is a perennial in Czech-German relationships. This means that the aim of the DPS to ‘reappraise’ the question of ‘return of property to Sudetan Germans’ was basic and without
it its identity would have been incomplete. Blühmel indeed reluctantly confirmed that the
DPS had the aim to address the problem of Sudetan property, but on his list it came second (see 008). The importance of a predicate in a political identity can therefore depend
on the participants’ perspectives and can be disputed.
The important point is that even though the host introduced this aim of the DPS
himself, he did it in the voice of the DPS. We have seen this gambit already in the newspaper articles. But why present predicates in the voice of the agency whose identity is in
question? This could simply be a matter of reporting genre. The result was, nevertheless,
that the felicity of the DPS presentation was not warranted by the host’s own knowledge,
but by the avowal of the DPS representative. Avowals produce commitments and so they
can be used normatively to ‘bind predicates to categories’.
How did the other guests in the studio react to the DPS raising the issue of Sudetenland? Vladimír Šuman, the chairman of the ‘committee for judicial defense and security’ of the Czech parliament explicitly rejected not just the return of the confiscated
property, but even any consideration of the issue (see 018, lines 2-3). According to him
this was unnecessary (because only one of the five landsmannschaft organisations demanded property return.) Note also that this aim of the DPS was presented as inconsistent
with existing law by the hostess of the programme (see 017).
ČT1/10/1/1993
017 Hostess: Mr Šuman these are demands which are in a direct contradiction to the law of
restitution.
018 Šuman: I am sorry. I think that [.] chh not think I am sure that it is necessary in principle to reject all considerations whatsoever about returning property to er Sudetan Germans
who were displaced. that is simply a matter which is completely unacceptable, and I also
think, that [.] it is unnecessary [.] the formulation of these problems that somebody from
Germany from the Sudetan Germans demands it, that this is misleading in the sense that as
far as I know there are several organisations of Sudetan Germans in the Wes- in the German Republic. there are I think about five.
019 X: yes. ||yes.||
020 Šuman: ||which|| have quite a different approach to the solving of ||this problem.||
021 X:
||certainly. certainly.||
022 Šuman: and that only one of them er threat- somehow puts forward these er claims.
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023 X: yes.
024 Šuman: I think that it is a problem which [.] is not solvable in a short period, which is
necessary to solve [.] through long-term dialogue, [.] between our citizens and between the
citizens er of the German Federal Republic.
Seeking a property settlement had already been established in Debata as the aim of the
DPS. This aim was now either unacceptable or unnecessary, and possibly against the law.
The implication was that the party is either ‘unnecessary’, ‘unacceptable’ or even illegal.
This concurs with E. Šolc’s assessment seen previously in Hospodářské noviny. It might
well have been asked whether the DPS still belonged among a collection of legal political
agencies.
With regard to the aim of the DPS to enable the return of displaced Sudetan Germans to the Czech Republic implied in Rudé právo the day after Debata, this was not in
fact first raised by J. Blühmel but by Bořek Valvoda, the Mayor of Most. (Most is a major
town in the border region to which the Sudetan Germans would return.) Valvoda asserted
that such a return was unacceptable (033, lines 1-2). Blühmel only confirmed the return
as an aim of DPS later in Debata (040, lines 6-8).
ČT1/10/1/1993
031 Host: Mr ||Valvo||da. you are from the north of Bohemia. [.] do you have the same
view?
032 Blühmel: ||therefore||
033 Valvoda: look, I- I think that it is necessary simply unequivocally to confirm that
which has been said. er the return is not possibly. er it is unacceptable. a:nd if the German
side want to co-operate with us. and want to invest here. well let them invest, of course because [.] we: need the investment funds. in fact it was obvious there in those excerpts, that
the citizens are in fact even now afraid of that- from the- er from the [.] coming of German
capital here. so it is a question rather, it is unrelated excuse me I think that it is unrelated to
the Sudetenland. the problem er Sudetan of Sudetenland really ought to be unambiguously
solved for us, and we should deal in this way with all our German partners. they must also
accept in- in all dealings there are two sides. and [.] that our, our approach must be absolutely clear.
Blühmel tried to reassure ‘Czech people’ that there was no danger that individuals would
lose property, but he also re-asserted that the Czech government should compensate
‘those Germans’. This can be taken as a demand to the Czech Government, which raises
whether or not the DPS is a proper political partner for the Czech Government. Debata’s
hostess herself posed this question (see 035 and 037).
The significance of the attempt by the DPS to initiate negotiations with the Czech
government was accepted by the participants in Debata. The point is that the DPS could
not achieve political status until it was accepted as a political party. Would the Czech
government reply to the DPS ‘demands’? If the DPS had been received by Klaus, this
would have reinforced its identity as a political agency. Blühmel probably recognised the
problem. When the hostess asked ‘So did the government react to your demands?’, he
shifted the topic and did not answer the question put to him (see 040, lines 1-2). Ladislav
Body (an MP) however reinstated the topic and formulated the activities of the DPS as
52
I. Leudar, J. Nekvapil: On the Emergence of Political Identity in the Czech Mass Media
‘coercive action’ (see 051 and 053).6 Blühmel accepted that as a possible interpretation
but rejected it – the DPS was against any coercion.
ČT1/10/1/1993
035 Hostess: you have Mr Blühmel also ||addre||ssed [.] the Czech Government. with your
036 X:
||( )||
037 Hostess: with your requests. if I remember correctly, then Mr Klaus er several times
said that [.] er this theme er for this theme there is for him only one er partner [.] the German government.
038 Blühmel: yes yes yes.
039 Hostess: so ||did the government react|| to your de||mands?||
040 Blühmel:
||I would not want for us||
||to look here || as a party somehow
that we want to take property from the Czechs, and give it to the Germans. excuse me
please not tha:t.I did ((say)) here already before (before it started,) I am not a great rhetorician. so you can’t expect from me [.] some verbal turns and dodges. I say what I think.
Czechs who live in Sudetenland. have the right to that property. nobody will be taking
away from them. the Germans who will request the property. should be [.] e:nabled [.] conduct business here in the same way as Czech businessmen. so they could return. as Sudetan
Germans. and so Czech Germans. grown out of this land, in it they were born. er maintain
the property of Czech people who hold it, and to those Germans who ask for it or (who already) would like to return. and live in Bohemia with us. we can give
((11 turns omitted))
051 Body: on the contrary I think, ||(
)|| Mr Blühmel could not
052 Blühmel:
||(
)||
053 Body:
it be a coercive action. some ( ) ||(
||
054 Blühmel:
||no, nobody wants|| a coercive
ac||tion||
055 Body:
||we ||will invest, but.
056 Blühmel: precisely against that coercive action we will make a stand.
In fact Czech premier Klaus rejected the ‘opinions’ of the DPS without talking to the
party or its representatives. His reaction was made public in a statement to the Czech
News Agency (ČTK) two days after Debata. It was reported in all the main national
newspapers, including in Rudé právo (RP/12/1/1993).
RP/12/1/1993
Klaus rejects Sudetan demands
Prague – On Monday Premier Klaus described as unacceptable for the Czech Government the demand to cancel the so-called Beneš decrees, on the basis of which Sudetan Germans lost their property after the war and had to leave Czech territory, as
well as the demand to compensate them.
“The starting point of the government is that the conditions which were created after the
war in agreement with the victorious powers and strengthened over almost fifty subsequent
years cannot be changed without disturbing the basic rights of the current citizens of the
Czech Republic, without shaking legal certainties, and as a result of this seriously destabi6)
Body was the only participant in Debata to address Blühmel directly. Neither Šuman nor Valvoda addressed their comments to Blühmel, even though he was sitting next to them. This was
very clearly so in the video. They were dealing with the points Blühmel raised without talking to
him.
53
Czech Sociological Review, VI, (1/1998)
lising the political situation in the Czech Republic,” said Prime Minister Klaus in a reply
provided for ČTK to the question regarding the demand of the chairman of the preparatory
committee of the Democratic Party of Sudetenland, J. Blühmel. “The government is
obliged by valid legal norms, including in the first place the restitution laws and by its own
decree of June of last year, in which it undertook to prevent any change in the legally set
limits on restitutions. The creation of the region ‘Sudetenland’ would in present conditions
be completely not organic. The opinions of the chairman of the preparatory committee
of the Democratic Party of Sudetenland, Mr Jaroslav Blühmel, are for the Government of the Czech Republic unacceptable,” states the Prime Minister. (bold in original)
The title of the article RP12/1/93 provided us with Klaus’s reaction to the DPS ‘demands’
– a rejection. But the article RP/12/1/1993 documents that Klaus in fact did not react directly to Blühmel and the DPS. According to RP/12/1/1993 he provided a statement to
the Czech News Agency. But at whose instigation? This was clarified in the ČTK release
ČTK/11/1/93/22:26.
ČTK/11/1/93/22:26
Klaus: Demands of Democratic Party Sudetenland are unacceptable
Praha 11th January (ČTK) Premier Klaus described the views of the chairman of the preparatory committee of the Democratic Party of Sudetenland, Jaroslav Blühmel, as unacceptable for the Czech Government. Last week he voiced amongst other things the demand
for the cancellation of the so-called Beneš Decrees, on the basis of which Sudetan Germans
lost their property after the war and had to leave Czech territory.
“The starting point of the government is that the conditions which were created after
the war in agreement with the victorious powers and strengthened over almost fifty subsequent years cannot be changed without disturbing the basic rights of the current citizens of
the Czech Republic, without shaking legal certainties, and as a result of this seriously destabilising the political situation in the Czech Republic,” said Prime Minister Klaus in a
written reply to Czech and Moravian-Silesian Agricultural News in response to a question
regarding the demands of the Democratic Party of Sudetenland. The premier also made the
reply available to ČTK.
“The government is obliged by valid legal norms, including in the first place the restitution laws and by its own decree of June of last year, in which it undertook to prevent any
change in the legally set limits on restitutions. The creation of the region ‘Sudetenland’
would in present conditions be completely not organic. The opinions of the chairman of the
preparatory committee of the Democratic Party of Sudetenland Mr Jaroslav Blühmel are for
the Government of the Czech Republic unacceptable,” states the Prime Minister.
The representatives of the party hold the view that the property of Sudetan Germans
should be returned, or that they should have the chance to buy it back more cheaply. After
this step, the Czech Republic would become an interesting country for investment by Austrian and German firms, whose interest, according to the Democratic Party of Sudetenland
has ebbed substantially.
The party so far has 600 members and was founded last November in Pilsen. It has,
however, to this day not been registered. It wants to be a party of Czechs, Sudetan Germans
and of people of other ethnic groups, who live both in and outside ČR. The main aim of the
party is to resolve justly questions of Sudetan Germans and of the prosperity of the Czech
border country.
(rok pel)
The question was put to Klaus by the daily Czech and Moravian-Silesian Agricultural
News (ČMSAN) (2nd paragraph, lines 5-6). However, it was not necessarily the case that
Klaus reacted only to ČMSAN, which is not an important national paper. He may well
54
I. Leudar, J. Nekvapil: On the Emergence of Political Identity in the Czech Mass Media
have been reacting in the light of Debata and under its impression. Klaus certainly did not
address his reply just to ČMSAN, but also to the Czech national press agency, ČTK (2nd
paragraph, line 7-8).
In this way, the representative of the Czech government rejected the ‘views’ and
‘opinions’ of the DPS but without being drawn into a dialogical engagement. Klaus did
not talk to the DPS, he commented on their ‘opinions’ (3rd paragraph, lines 4 and 5).
Blühmel and the DPS had to read the comments reported in national papers like most
other people. If Klaus had received the DPS for face-to-face talks he would have thereby
ratified their political status. The upshot was that the DPS was not treated as an acceptable dialogical partner.
It is interesting to note what the Czech national dailies ignored in Debata and in the
ČTK release. The declared aim of the DPS to care for the Sudetenland was left behind.
The ČTK release also reported that the DPS aimed to be a party of ‘Czechs, Sudetan
Germans and of people of other ethnic groups’. This aspiration to become an inter-ethnic
political party was not taken up by any national newspaper. Instead, as we have seen, the
national newspapers aligned the DPS with ethnic Sudetan Germans and this became the
steady state of the DPS.
We are now nearing the twilight of the DPS. RP/5/2/1993 presented Blühmel’s appearance in Debata in terms of Czech reactions: ‘it raised widespread protest’. It is therefore not surprising that Blühmel was removed from his function by his own party. The
journalist reported this in the voice of ‘L. Duda, the spokesperson of the preparatory
committee’ of the DPS.
RP/5/2/1993
Blühmel removed
Pilsen (vh) J. Blühmel, who as the chairman of the preparatory committee of the Democratic Party-Sudetenland raised widespread protest by his appearance on TV, was removed
from his post. This was conveyed to the reporter of RP by L. Duda, the spokesperson of the
preparatory committee with the comment that the views presented by J. Blühmel do not
correspond to the programme of the party. “We are democrats, we do not want to impose
our goals by force, but to persuade by discussion.” he declared. What is concerned,
amongst other things, is the demand to cancel the so-called Beneš Decrees, which, we are
told, still creates apprehension amongst potential German investors, because their property
could be taken in the future. According to the declaration of L. Duda new members from
Olomouc, the Opava region, and Brno are joining the party. The number of members is according to his information more than 800. The new nominee of the preparatory committee
for the post of chairman is J. Schottenbauer from Jirkov.
Duda explained Blühmel’s removal saying “We are democrats, we do not want to impose
our goals by force, but to persuade by discussion.” The reader may remember that Blühmel never threatened terrorism, he warned of its possibility. What mattered was, however,
not what he said but the effect he achieved. The change of leader however did not save
the party. This is not surprising: the identity which emerged characterised the DPS as a
social agency, not Blühmel as a person. In any case, the DPS could not raise sufficient
public support and was in effect disbanded.
Conclusion
We began this paper by outlining the basics of Membership Categorisation Analysis
(MCA). We proposed that the identity of a political agency can be defined in terms of
55
Czech Sociological Review, VI, (1/1998)
predicates expressing its agentive propensities such as, for instance, its aims, preferences,
common beliefs and activities.
MCA enabled us to follow the development of the identity of the DPS. It emerged
– and ceased to exist – as an organisation with a contested identity. It endeavoured to
present itself as a trans-ethnic political party to restore Sudetenland, to represent the people there, and to forestall future conflict. In the majority of cases it was received as an
ethnically aligned organisation, the aims of which were to facilitate the return of displaced Sudetan Germans, and to secure compensation for the property confiscated after
the Second World War. The DPS never secured a political status for itself or, to put it in
MCA terms, it did not join other political parties in the collection ‘political parties’.
The technical term ‘predicate’ is a useful shorthand for the activities, aims, and beliefs of a political agency. The main finding of our case study is, however, that ‘binding
predicates’ to a social category (a technical term of MCA) is essentially a mundane dialogical process. In our case study, predicates defining the DPS (for instance, its aims)
were typically avowed by its representatives. Where predicates were proposed by the
opponents of the DPS, the ‘binding’ was either done by reporting the speech of the DPS
representatives (in their voice) or its ascription was warranted by reporting an avowal.
This strategy seems to have been relatively independent of the mass media genre – it was
used both on television and in newspapers. The individual avowals were, however, not
sufficient for predicates to become aspects of the identity. The avowed predicates had to
be accepted by political opponents. We have seen, however, that the proffered predicates
could be ‘just noted’, ignored or rejected. This was in fact the source of the bifurcation of
the political identity of the DPS.
It is clear that everything a political agency does or expresses does not become an
aspect of its identity. This problem is not addressed in any detail in our paper. One interesting point is, however, that the personal characteristics of the DPS representative J.
Blühmel were never presented in the Czech dailies. We learned nothing about who he
was (for example that he had German father and Czech mother, that he only spoke Czech,
that he was a trade unionist and worked as a tram driver.) His identity throughout the
affair was very much bound to that of the DPS. The identity of the DPS was partly constituted in his activities but it was not bound to his personal identity.
IVAN LEUDAR was born in Czechoslovakia, educated at London University and is bilingual. At
present he is a Reader in Psychology at the University of Manchester. His work is influenced by
pragmatics and ethnomethodology. His main current concern is with how membership categories
and concepts are produced, maintained and contested in talk and in mass media, and how they
influence individual action and experience. The specific problems he is currently working on are:
(i) historical and contemporary conceptualisations of experience of hearing voices (verbal hallucinations), and (ii) the presentation of ethnic minorities in the Central European mass media during the periods of social change.
JIŘÍ NEKVAPIL was a Research Fellow at the Institute of Czech Language of the Czechoslovak
Academy of Sciences, Prague, where he also received his PhD. In 1990 he moved to the Department of General Linguistics at Charles University, Prague, where he teaches sociolinguistics,
conversation analysis, and pragmatics. He has published extensively in these areas. Among his
edited volumes is Reader in Czech Sociolinguistics (Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins
1987) and Studies in Functional Stylistics (Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins 1993). Recently he has published a number of papers dealing with the Czech mass media and the interethnic
relationships in the Czech Republic.
56
I. Leudar, J. Nekvapil: On the Emergence of Political Identity in the Czech Mass Media
Transcription conventions
?
.
,
:
[.]
[..]
[...]
(but)
()
((cough))
out
|| ||
X
rising intonation
falling intonation
continuing intonation
lengthening of the previous syllable
a very short, still audible pause
a longer pause
a long pause
a cut-off of the prior word or syllable
items enclosed within single parentheses are in doubt
no words could be distinguished in the talk enclosed within single parentheses
in double parentheses there is a comment by the transcriber
underlining indicates emphasis
the onset and the ending of simultaneous talk of two speakers (overlap)
speaker who could not be identified
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